


IN & OUT

by strawberryredblush



Category: ATEEZ (Band), TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alice In Wonderland AU, Alice Yunho, Ambiguous Relationships, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Eventual Happy Ending, Implied Smut, M/M, Mad Hatter Hongjoong, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamorous relationship, Red Queen/Queen of Hearts Seonghwa, Well only one, White Rabbit Wooyoung, character death in flashbacks, don't get on your moral high horse for this one, haha - Freeform, no permanent character death I promise, starts out kind of lighthearted, the rest are a surprise - Freeform, the rest of ateez are in a poly btw, then just gets progressively worse, this is here to reassure when things get iffy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:35:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25040995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberryredblush/pseuds/strawberryredblush
Summary: What does one do when they fall down a hole in the ground and end up in a strange land where all prominent residents are people who have gone missing in the last five years?
Relationships: Jeong Yunho/Jung Wooyoung, Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	IN & OUT

**Author's Note:**

> Hellooo, I was going post another installment in the cafe sunrise series before working on this but the one I'm working on involves a lot of thought my brain doesn't wanna do so have this instead! Usually I'll wait to be at least a decent way into the next chapter before posting chaptered work but my brain wanted a small serotonin boost so I posted this as soon as I finished, some feedback would be nice ;-;. Anyway because of that chapter 2 will take some time but after that updates should be pretty regular. 
> 
> A note for this story is that I made up a couple of wonderland characters that don't actually exist in the original story or any derivative works to fit the story, it's only two but you'll see. The rest are in the og or works inspired by it. 
> 
> Yes this work was in fact named after the red velvet song by the same name, I always get really inspired for this work when I listen to it and it fits.
> 
> Finally, can you guess who the two talking at the end are? *side eye emoji*

Wooyoung trips over a tree root as he continues running through the forest but is able to catch himself before he falls completely and continues running. He turns around to see behind him frantically checking if the beast had caught up to him; he doesn’t even sigh in relief when he sees it’s not in sight before picking up his pace again, scared he’s being lulled into a false sense of security. It doesn’t take long for his fear to be proven right when he hears the loud growl of the beast, obviously getting closer. he whimpers in fright before running even faster, feeling the soles of his feet continuously getting torn up by the debris of the forest and his arms and face getting scratched by the branches of trees but the adrenaline leaves him numb to the pain. His breathing gets heavier and heavier, louder and louder the longer he runs. The forest is so quiet besides the sounds of his breathing and the cracking of branches and rustling of dead leaves as he runs. It causes him to panic, his mind racing at how easy it is to locate him.

The panic intensifies and it all feels useless as he starts hearing the sounds of the beast running, he doesn’t want to check how close it must be now if he can hear it running after him. As he continues to run, completely on pure adrenaline, he’s still confused how a beast that most definitely hadn’t lived in the forest before, got here and his terrible luck being the one to get it’s attention. 

His unfocused, panicking mind proves to be his downfall as he trips over a boulder he didn’t even see, mind too filled with racing thoughts falling to the ground, his hands barely catching him, avoiding the worst of the damage to his face. He quickly tries to scramble up but the moment he tries to put weight on the foot that hit the boulder he hisses in pain and immediately drops back to the ground. He hears the footsteps of the beast closer than ever and tries to crawl away quickly but soon stops, hanging his head in acceptance of his fate. He winces, slowly turning around and sitting down, deciding to finally look at the beast determined to bravely face it down. 

But the horrid sight of it causes panic to once again seize his body causing the tears that clung to the corners of his eyes to finally spill over in panicked sobs. He begs and pleads, hyperventilating, with what he knows is a mindless beast that doesn’t understand what he’s doing as it continues to approach him. It’s almost cathartic, releasing all the tension in his body through hysterical sobbing, he wasn’t crying just because of his fate but also all the pain his poor body felt after the adrenaline faded. Not being able to properly catch his breath, everything seems to start blurring together from lack of air and he starts to feel pain in his throat but he knows the beast isn’t close enough to touch him yet.

Oh

He’s screaming 

So loudly, so viscerally, it hurts his throat.

He can hear himself screaming something but frustratingly he can’t make out what it is he’s screaming. 

Seconds later, the bear is right in front of him.

Everything goes dark. 

.

.

.

Wooyoung gasps and sits up as he wakes up from his nightmare. He pants from the leftover adrenaline of his dream, his ears twitching in agitation. As he catches his breath and reaches up to soothe his long ears he tries to recall the nightmare. When the memory of it floods back into his mind, a shiver runs down his spine and his ears start to go haywire. Knowing he won’t be able to sleep on his own for the rest of the night he crawls out of bed and quickly runs out of the room and down the hall. He slows down once he reaches the large double door at the end of the hallway and hesitates before knocking on the door twice. 

There’s a minute pause before he hears shuffling and a deep, croaky from sleep voice is heard. 

“Wooyoung, I know it’s you, you can come in without knocking, I’ve told you a million times.” 

He immediately opens the door and shuffles in and makes a beeline for the large bed and the figure sitting up on one side of it, waiting with open arms. Collapsing into the arms he heaves a breath of relief, the contact instantly calming the churning in his stomach and his rapidly beating heart. 

Feeling calmer in the soothing presence he tries to joke “You say that but you aren’t always exactly alone in here.”

The other doesn’t bother to quip back, Wooyoung guesses the other feels his trembling and is too worried to banter. 

The figure, Seonghwa, finally speaks up again “Was it the same nightmare as always?” 

Cuddling closer he nods into the other’s shoulder, shivering lightly when Seonghwa starts scratching at the base of his ears to further soothe him. He takes a gulp of air before whispering “It’s so scary, nothing ever actually happens because I always wake up but obviously I don’t know that in the nightmare” 

Seonghwa hums in understanding as he continues his ministrations “And you still can’t figure it out what you’re screaming?”

He shakes his head “No and I really want to find out, I just-” he sighs “I just- for some reason I feel like knowing would help somehow” he mumbles the last bit out, feeling like he was being a bit ridiculous. 

“Well, I think there’s a reason you can’t hear what you’re screaming yet and you’ll hear it when it’s time” Seonghwa rested his head atop of Wooyoung’s, mindful of his ears, as he whispered back. 

“Why can’t that time be now” He pouted 

Seonghwa quietly chuckled and laid them both down “We can be philosophical later after you have a couple more hours of sleep, so sleep” 

Wooyoung huffed but obeyed and buried his face in Seonghwa’s chest and slowly drifted to sleep. He doesn’t dream of anything this time.

_

Yunho winces when he wakes up to his alarm blaring loudly. He flails around for his phone to turn it off, he sighs in relief when he does so, flopping back onto the bed. When he thinks about it more he realises it was summer now, he was on break from school. Why did his alarm go off? He distinctly remembers turning it off in celebration of the semester ending on his last day. 

Despite just wanting to sleep in, there had to be a reason he had set his alarm so he groans sitting up, squinting at the calendar next to his bed trying to read his, admittedly terrible, handwriting through sleep blurry eyes. He hates the way his heart drops once the blurriness fades after a few minutes and he realises why he set his alarm.

Right,

Today was the year anniversary of Wooyoung’s disappearance and he’d planned to do something special for it. He’d wanted to spend the entire day at their favorite park and ride his bike through the trails they always rode through together. The park was also where the tribute to him was placed and he’d even bought flowers the night before to place them there. 

He sighs and rubs his chest, as if it would help the ghost pain of heartache. Losing your best friend was hard, losing them and having no idea what happened to them was  _ terrible _ . At this point he’s pretty sure he has the first month after the disappearance completely blocked from memory, he only remembers blurry images of his dark room and the sound of his hiccuped breathing. The last couple of months were even worse with the case slowly losing steam and it feeling like everyone but him was giving up. He felt like the only reason the police along with Wooyoung’s family hadn’t announced him as being presumably dead. That was dramatic of him, he knew that but it was hard not to think in extremes. 

Slapping his cheeks to snap out of it, he gets up. He had plenty of time to lay in his bed and wallow in depression but he had actually planned something for the day for once and damn it if he wasn’t going to go through with it. Especially since it was in Wooyoung’s honor. 

After he finished getting ready he heads to his kitchen to grab the bouquet he’d bought to leave at the tribute in the park. He’s thankful that he used that preserving powder in the water he put them in as the flowers looked as nice as they did yesterday. Maybe it didn’t matter since he’d just be leaving them out in the open anyway but it felt disrespectful to leave already wilting flowers. He takes them out of the vase he had them in and dries them a bit before delicately putting them in his unzipped backpack and heading out to his bike. 

He decides on going to the tribute first not wanting to risk the flowers falling out of his backpack on the rougher bits of the trails he was going to ride through. Ignoring his chest pains that had nothing to do with any physical affliction he skids to a stop in front of the large framed picture of Wooyoung atop a park table that was filled with slightly dirty stuffed animals, wilting flowers and candles that hadn’t been lit in a long time, he definitely needed come back to do some maintenance because it seemed nobody else would. He sets his bouquet right in front of his photo, his eyes growing misty and he faintly smiles as he studies the photo they’d used. Every other time he’d come here he’d been too busy sobbing his eyes out to properly look at the photo. It was a photo taken on Wooyoung’s last birthday before he disappeared, he was winking mischievously with a large grin despite his face being a mess of smushed cake, courtesy of Yunho himself. His hair had been lilac at the time and it was definitely his favorite hair color on Wooyoung. He takes a wet and raspy sounding deep breath and shakes his head, wiping the tears in his eyes before they can properly fall and forces a bright grin as he meets the eyes of Wooyoung in the picture. 

“I promise we’ll find you soon Wooyoung,” he whispered.

_

Yunho closes his eyes, feeling the gentle breeze as he rides his bike. God, it had been so long since he’d taken the time to leisurely bike through these trails. He thinks he probably hasn’t ventured here since the last time he’d come with Wooyoung, too scared of memories that would resurface. But today he decided to indulge in them instead of trying his best to keep his memories of Wooyoung to the most surface ones in an effort to cope. 

The memory that comes first is of the course the last time they’d been on these trails. They made the very stupid decision to camp that night despite Wooyoung having a summer job interview the next day because they wanted to be able to see the stars clearly for once, something they didn’t really get to see living in the city. It was definitely one of his favorite excursions to the trails, they’d spent the day biking the trails and playing silly games like chicken, both of them claiming victory because they didn’t have a third person to be a judge. The evening had been spent putting up the tent, it was the first time for both of them, causing it to take until the sun had almost set for them to finish. He giggled as he remembered Wooyoung’s loud whining about having to start a fire when it was already dark. Thankfully that took a significantly less amount of time, Yunho having brought a longer lighter from home. In what both would call a miracle they were able to cook their dinner and some marshmallows without incident. They spent the rest of the night looking at the sky trying to find constellations, Wooyoung cheering loudly, eyes sparkling, whenever he found one, he even remembers not being able to stop smiling fondly at the sight.

Yunho feels himself flush when he remembers that last bit. It had been a while, since he’d thought about his crush on his friend. He’d tried to push it to the back of his mind, it had felt weirdly wrong and selfish to think about being in love with his best friend while he was missing. It felt like thinking about it made Wooyoung’s disappearance about him. Maybe that was ridiculous but that was how he felt. He shook his head, that wasn’t what he wanted to focus on. 

Going back to the memory he had been reminiscing about he couldn’t help but bark out a laugh as he remembered the next morning or well the next afternoon as they had forgotten to set an alarm and Wooyoung had been on the verge of being late to his job interview. So they scrambled to get everything ready to leave, Wooyoung shrieking that he was going to be late the entire time.

“I’m going to be late!”

Wait. 

His eyes shot open, having been closed this entire time and he slowed his bike. That hadn’t been in his mind, someone said that out loud. He looked around wondering it came from. He paused and tried to see if he’d hear it again or if it was in his head after all. Sure enough, he hears the voice again. 

“Oh god I’m going to be so late!” 

They sounded incredibly distressed and Yunho felt the need to help and maybe he could with his bike, he started slowly moving his bike again in the direction he thought the voice was coming from. As he biked closer the voice sounded again seeming to become even more distraught, they sounded like they were having a meltdown. 

“ _ I’m late I’m late I’m late I’m late I’m late”  _

Yunho winced when the voice cracked at the end of it’s mantra. He continued to move slowly looking around for where the voice might be coming from. Finally after a minute of following the hysterical voice he sees faint movement up ahead past the trees. He speeds up a bit to catch up once he’s caught sight of them. The closer he gets the more the air seems to become more suffocating something just seemed off, he licked his lips and wiped his clammy palms on his jeans before continuing on. Maybe he had been out in the sun too long and it was messing with his head, he’d go home after making sure that person was okay. Once he’s past enough trees the person becomes more distinguishable, he can only see their back as they continue sprinting through the forest. They had a large white coat draped over one arm and seemed to be staring at something in their other hand as they ran but the most eye-catching thing and the thing that almost caused Yunho to fall off his bike was the head of lilac hair that. . .had rabbit ears coming out of them?

Huh? 

He took his hands off his handles to rub at his eyes, he wasn’t hallucinating, right? He blinked, once, twice. Nope they were still there. Well, he could figure out if he was hallucinating because of his time out in the sun once he caught up. Seeing that his pause had widened the gap between them even more he put his hands back on the handles and sped up. 

However, when he was only a couple yards away, the person suddenly paused and cursed out loud before suddenly turning to the right and continuing to run, not having registered him at all. Yunho actually fell off his bike in shock this time. 

It. . .it couldn’t be.

Right?

There was no way, he was just seeing what he wanted to see because they had the same hair color Wooyoung last had. Right?

He had to find out. 

He gets up, abandoning his bike as he sprinted towards the slowly disappearing silhouette in the distance. 

It’s only now he notices how restless the forest is, the wind is whipping through the trees and howling, the birds are chirping and singing in such a deafening cacophony he has to cover his ears as he runs. 

“Hey!! Wait up!!” He yells after the figure but they don’t seem to hear him. 

The forest is starting to become incredibly disorienting, it seems like everything is blurry and swaying but he continues calling after the person, he just  _ had _ to make sure. He’s getting closer, only a few feet away now, but for some reason it seems like they still can’t hear him. Though now he can hear their loud incoherent mumbling that didn’t make much sense. 

“I’m so late I’m so late, he’s going to be so mad I promised to be back early, I’m late I’m late”

It went on and on like that and no matter how much Yunho tried to call out to them, they didn’t reply. Seemingly too deep in their panic to hear anything outside their own voice. He would just have to catch up if he wanted to help. 

But he took his eyes off of them for one second. He swears it was just one second and when he looked back, they were suddenly gone. 

“What. . . where did they-” 

Continuing to run while looking around for them turned out to be his downfall. He screamed as he fell down a massive hole after he tripped over what must have been a tree root. 

At this point he’s convinced he passed out from being in the sun too long somewhere along the line and that this was all a dream. He just hopes he wakes up before he hits the ground. 

Everything goes dark. 

-

A low whistle 

“Ouch. . .that must have hurt” A voice drawls, amusement obvious in their voice.

“Don’t make fun of someone who’s passed out and can’t fight back. Besides, I’ve heard you looked worse when you first got here” A lower pitch voice answers. 

The first voice sneers “And how would you know? You never come out to greet the newcomers unless queenie decides to come. You most certainly weren’t there when I first arrived” 

“Don’t call him that, you know he hates it” 

“Yeah yeah, whatever” 

“And I know because a certain ace of cards told me” 

A scandalized gasp “That terrible gossip monger!” 

“Please, you love him” the second voice scoffs

A dismissive sniff “Perhaps” 

“Anyway we should go look for someone that actually knows how to explain everything for when he wakes up.”

“We can-”

“ _ Without scaring them _ ” 

“Fine” 

Two pairs of shoes are heard retreating. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope it's good so far! You can ask any questions you have and if they don't involve spoilers I'll answer. 
> 
> Also I didn't think people would care to ask but someone did last time so I made a separate twitter account for my writing because I want to keep my main private. It's @berryhongie and I literally created it right before posting this hehe follow it if you want updates on how my writing is going or whatever it is that writers do lmao.


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